Clean
by lynnxlady
Summary: One-shot, in which Kikyo thinks about Inuyasha, and obsesses over her inability to get clean.


   One of her toes prodded the surface cautiously. "Ooh, this feels good!" the girl chirped to her friend. Her indecent, mud-stained garment was tugged over her head, her underclothes were dropped, and moments later, the girl dove into the water and emerged with her bangs plastered to her face.

   The second girl turned up the corners of her mouth in a smile that did not even encompass the whole of her lips, much less reach her serious eyes.

   The first girl worked the tips of her fingers against her dirty face. "Sango, pass me the soap, will you?" Her friend did, and the girl rubbed the cake of soap in her hands until they were white with lather. Then she smeared the suds across her shoulders, down her belly, then down her thin legs.

   A ways off, dark eyes watched the dirt loosen from the girl's skin, leaving it pink from her rough scrubbing. Then she dipped down in the water to rinse, and rose again. She lifted the heavy mass of her hair from her back, wringing it out. Now the craving eyes caught every detail—every muddy rivulet that trickled over the girl's slim frame, washing her, cleansing her as the dirt relinquished its hold.

   "It's so good to get clean, finally," she said with a long, leisurely sigh.

   The eyes' expression shifted, the brow above them drawing low. And then their owner turned away, jealousy twisting inside.

~*~

   Kikyo found him swiftly, at the base of a massive tree with his eyes shut. She brushed her lips against his, the contact fleeting. 

   "Kikyo…" he moaned, still sleeping, before his eyes flew open. "Kikyo!"

   The girl didn't have him, at least, Kikyo assured herself. He was hers.

   Lips moving in a smirk of joyless satisfaction, she drew away from him. Her eyes perused his face swiftly; then she brought her first two fingers to touch lightly on his lips. Her tapered fingers slipped to the strong line of his jaw, tenderly exploring the face of her killer. She knew as someone knows a learned fact that he had not driven his hand deep into her side. That his claws were not the claws that had punctured her lungs and broken her ribs. But below that unimportant sort of knowledge, the whole of her tiny soul shrieked for his death, boomed out the ingrained truth that her blood had stained _his hands. And the heart always overrules logic._

   Her hands flexed against his back, the muscles tightening. No, she corrected herself, not muscles; muscles were flesh and she was not. Lips pressed into a flat line, Kikyo moved her pseudo hands to his fingers, gently skimming the pads of her fingers over his claws. She could never see those claws without picturing them with red caked under the quick of the nail, remembering the stench of coppery blood so thick in the air she could taste it with every desperate breath of air.

   Her fingers moved on, past his claws and hands to his wrists. The texture of his skin was different from hers—smoother, warmer. Cleaner. And she could feel a pulse, the silent _pt-pt-pt_ of life under her thumbs.

   She hated her fake of a body, the horrid construct of earth and old bone that the oni witch had forced her soul into. _Her soul, not that silly child's. Hers, damn it—it was hers though the copy had it now. The copy; her heart beat in her chest and there was a pulse in her wrist and when she bathed she climbed out of the river with her flesh _clean_._

   Her mind ran on; chaotic, wild. No. She would not sacrifice control. Guided by a now unnecessary habit, Kikyo drew a shaky breath to still her thoughts. The air rattled inside the caverns that her captured souls had carved within her chest—a subtle noise that roared inside her, echoing in her mind, but silent to the outside world. Except perhaps he heard it, with his keen animal ears, because one of his hands cupped her jaw.

   Kikyo looked steadily into his yellow eyes, letting her face go slack. She knew from watching her blurred reflection in a river once that her eyes were flat and dull now. Nothing should give her mad thoughts away to him, and yet his face went unmistakably tender. His mouth softened, and then parted as if to speak. Never had he been so unguarded in her presence before. Even when they stood together privately, that girl always intruded, her shadow making it clear he was no longer the Inuyasha she had loved.

   "I will kill you someday, hanyou," she stated flatly, not realizing her words until she had said it and could not take it back. Once she had promised him that, when they both were alive, when they had pursued each other in a mockery of a hunt. It had been a lie, then, although she had never admitted that it was, even to herself. And it had slipped so easily from her mouth then, not cautiously considered before being spoken solemnly as was her manner. And again he made her rash, made those words drop so bluntly from her mouth, this time giving away her thoughts instead of hiding them.

   "Kikyo," he said softly, at last clicking his own jaw shut again. "I—"

   "I _will, this time," she said tersely, her voice tinged with emotion for the first time. He didn't believe her; she could see it in his eyes. Something was floating in his eyes; something intense and frightening._

   Kikyo tensed, loathing him so much more because of his unbelieving.

   But she gave him one last kiss, as tender and as sweet as she could make it.

   Perhaps, though she told herself otherwise, she did so because of all those wants and desires sliding over each other in the back of her mind; lurking like snakes to ambush her when she least expected it. And, oh the things she wanted sometimes. To touch. To have him back, if only for a few moments, as Inuyasha—_her_ Inuyasha, not the girl's. The way things could have, should have been, but the idiot had to go and kill her. 

   Her tongue slid into his mouth. It played against the warmth of his tongue, testing, searching… Then the kiss deepened—her mouth moving desperately against his. Her hands slipped under his shirt through the collar, to spasm against his back; she kneaded her fingers, feeling the definition of his real muscles under his real skin.

   Her dirt tongue skidded against his canines.

   And, he gagged, coughing and choking from the dirt stuck in his throat.

   Her tongue retreated. Her lips twisted a little. "Your band of pets is near," she said, bitterly.

   They weren't.

   Without another word, she left. She waited until she was out of his sight before she spat out his saliva and loose dirt. She watched the mud from her tongue blend with the dirt on the ground.

~*~

   Kikyo shoved her kimono off her shoulders, ripped free her shirt, and knelt down on the riverbank. She scooped generous handfuls, drenching her chest and her shoulders with the icy water. She watched it darken as it rushed down her body; stared at the dirt gathering in each individual droplet.

   And still she could feel the dirt, thick as a blanket, suffocating her. Her hands dipped into the water again, this time plunging deeper until the water stabbed her armpits. Her fingers dug into the streambed, dredging up rough sand and smooth pebbles.

   Her hands jumped to her collarbone. She scrubbed violently, stripping layers of dirt away, only to yield more dirt. Kikyo reached for more sand and slathered it, ripping at her skin desperately—as if Urasue had hidden a real body somewhere under the grave dirt and she just had to unearth it.

   It was only when she broke through the dirt to the chasms inside and her captured souls flung themselves against her frenzied hands, that Kikyo sagged to the ground, spent. Her fingers, still clutched to her chest, penned in the souls. They beat against the cell bars; crazed from the scent of freedom they could not claim.

   Her sham hands stinging from the souls' onslaught, Kikyo eased one away from her chest. Slowly, hating the act, she pinched the darker mud lying against the reddish mud of the river, made it into a pile, and scraped it into her hand. Her eyes fixed on the mud—_her_ mud. The mud was hers in the way Inuyasha's muscles were his. An integral piece of her inner machinery.

   Face warping with misery; she sealed the hollow in her chest.


End file.
